This was a really fun sermon for me to prepare, because it’s rare that I really think all four of the lessons work together to say what I’m led to preach on for the week. So we’re going to be bouncing around a bit between and around all four texts for today. It may be a little long, cause there’s a lot going on, so bear with me.
Matthew 15:10-28; Romans 11:1-2a,29-32; Psalm 67; Isaiah 56:1,6-8
I’m going to start with a little history refresher, so bear with me. We’re going to go all the way back to Genesis, because it’s important to note three passages. First is Genesis 1:26-26: “[God says,] ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all ht earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” God created all people to be his proxy on the Earth — to take care of it in his place, and show creation what God was like.
Second, in Genesis 12:1-3, God says to a random guy from Ur, “Leave your country, your people, and your father’s household and go to the land I will show you. I will make you into a great nation and I will bless you; I will make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and whoever curses you I will curse; and all peoples on earth will be blessed through you.” Pretty heavy stuff right? God chose Abram/Abraham and his offspring to be special in the world — to be his image, a more person-specific version of what happened at creation.
Finally, in Genesis 32:28, after wrestling with God, was told, “Your name will no longer be Jacob, but Israel, because you have struggled with God and with men and have overcome.” Now we have a name to go with God’s chosen people — one that is incredibly prophetic given Israel’s — the nation — constant waffling over whether or not to follow God or something else.
So now to our lessons for today, starting with Psalm 67. The Psalmist begins, and I’m reading from the NIV, not what it is in the LBW, “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.” The rest of the Psalm is a prayer for all the nations on Earth to celebrate God in the way that Israel already does, as His image. But it is Israel who is the vessel through which God reveals himself to the world.
Similarly, the reading from Isaiah 56 goes, “Maintain justice and do what is right, for my salvation is close at hand and my righteousness will soon be revealed… And foreigners who bind themselves to the Lord to serve him, to love the name of the Lord, and to worship him… these I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer… I will gather still others to them besides those already gathered.”
Now, around the time Isaiah was written, there was a good deal of turmoil surrounding the nation. For nearly 200 years, Israel and Judah were separate nations, usually at war with each other, and right in the middle of Isaiah’s ministry, the northern kingdom, Israel, was conquered by the Assyrian Empire and the people were scattered throughout that empire. Around this same time, the Assyrian Empire was also threatening to conquer Judah, the southern kingdom, but God saved Judah from the same fate, in large part due to the faithfulness of King Hezekiah.
So the last thing the Israelites wanted to know was that God was going to call foreigners to himself. In fact, through much of their history, Israel had a hard enough time serving God themselves, and almost never revealed Him to the rest of creation. But this was their call, both at creation and the calling of Abraham.
In Romans 10 and 11, Paul addresses Israel’s failures. Toward the end of Romans 10, Paul sounds very disappointed in the nation of Israel, having not followed God’s call for them and worshipping the Law rather than the Giver of the Law. But Romans 11 begins, “Did God reject his people? By no means! God’s gifts and his call are irrevocable. Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you.”
This is an interesting concept that Paul is bringing up, because it seems as though the understanding of who God’s chosen people — those who are his image — has shifted a bit. Whereas before, God’s chosen people were the people of Israel, descended from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, now God’s chosen people are all those who, as we heard last week, confess Jesus as Lord and believe that God raised him from the dead. And now, instead of Israel revealing God to the nations (sometimes translated Gentiles), the nations reveal God to Israel.
This idea plays itself out in our Gospel lesson. Jesus, having just pointed out that the Pharisees were not following God the way they should be, encountered a Gentile woman in the region of the Phoenicians. She came to Jesus asking for her daughter to be healed, and Jesus replied, almost a little surprisingly, “I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel.” She replied, “Lord, help me!” Jesus, again, a little surprisingly, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to their dogs.” And then the woman’s reply is nearly as surprising, “Yes Lord, but even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters’ table.” Finally Jesus replies as we would expect, “Woman, you have great faith! Your request is granted.” And the woman’s daughter was healed at that moment.
Matthew contrasts the behavior of God’s traditional “chosen people”, that of unbelief and rage at what Jesus has been teaching, with the reaction of those who have faith in God to save them, notably the Gentile woman he encountered. She had faith when the people who should have had faith did not. And now, given her place in the gospels, she is revealing God to those around her — doing the job of God’s chosen people even though her ancestry is not from Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob.
Just like that Canaanite woman, even though we are not part of God’s chosen people by virtue of ancestry, we are God’s chosen people because of our profession of faith in him. We are called out, and set apart for God’s purpose — to reveal God to his creation, not through any of our own doing, but because God set us apart to be his own. As the Psalmist wrote, “May God be gracious to us and bless us and make his face shine upon us, that your ways may be known on earth, your salvation among all nations.”